Subscriber Satisfaction

The Video Internet

Internet video has become the dominant application on broadband networks today. BitTorrent, YouTube, MySpace and a handful of other applications are leaders in delivering online video and have become the largest consumer of residential broadband traffic. In addition, video clips are available on ALL of the most popular web sites. All of the major studios and independent producers are delivering video streams and downloads for Internet delivery, making video the fastest growing application on broadband networks today.

As a result, the key metric in determining subscriber satisfaction has become how fast a user can download and watch a video, and the quality of that video. Broadband subscribers now take basic connectivity for granted. It is no longer good enough to provide reliable access to web sites, email, and the company VPN. Users expect that their favorite video services will work, and work well, whether they are based on traditional HTTP technology or rapidly emerging P2P networks. Interference with the performance of these applications can draw national attention.

Challenges and Opportunities

Satisfying subscriber demand for video streaming and downloads is critical for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) today. This creates many network challenges as rapidly growing media consumption increases bandwidth costs and produces congestion at multiple points in the network. The good news is that consumers who watch Internet video also tend to be the most affluent and are the most likely to want to upgrade their broadband package to the highest speed, and highest price point. ISPs need to embrace this behavior and develop a solution that satisfies the subscriber demand. It creates significant competitive advantages, drives broadband adoption, and encourages users to upgrade to the highest priced package.

The Solution

Intelligent Media Caching allows an ISP to economically satisfy subscriber demand while actually improving the speed and Quality of Experience (QoE). Caching allows an ISP to source more video bits closer to the edge of the network where they can be delivered near wire speed to the consumer. And Intelligent Media Caching allows the ISP to localize traffic inside the network without creating additional points of congestion, including traffic management of the last mile.

By deploying PeerApp’s UltraBand™ products, ISPs are vastly improving their subscribers’ video QoE. Download times are decreased and video quality is improved. Making highly cacheable multimedia content available for fast, uninterrupted delivery to the subscriber will yield enhanced brand, competitive advantage, subscriber growth, lower costs and improved profitability. It also encourages subscribers to upgrade to the highest speed broadband packages, as those users realize the greatest benefit of wire speed delivery. These services usually come with higher price points.

The following chart depicts the performance differences when downloading a 218MB video file – a 30 minute television program – over an ISP network using a PeerApp UltraBand™ (blue line) compared with an ISP without PeerApp acceleration (red line). The vertical axis on the left represents download time in minutes; the vertical axis on the right represents the performance improvement factor – X multiplier. The green points in the chart represents the significant improvement in download times resulting from the PeerApp implementation. For example, on a 5MB connection, the video file downloads in 6 minutes versus 383 minutes (over 6 and a half hours), a factor of 60 times improvement.